


secret fragile skies

by thepurplewombat



Series: Under Pressure [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (HINT! It's probably not), Ace Janine, Cuddle Pile, Cuddles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gay Sherlock, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OR IS IT, Past Rape/Non-con, Pining Sherlock, Platonic Cuddling, Sherlock and Janine have a beautiful relationship, Skin Hunger, Unrequited Love, Vulnerable Sherlock, everything Sherlock does is to try and make John happy and safe, just this once let everyone try to make Sherlock happy, literally everyone in the Holmes family is an assassin, lots of talking and also hugs, or a spy, platonic co-bathing, so many cuddles, the Holmes Family Secret Basement Hideout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 09:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: This is the promised sequel to Pressure Points.If you know what happened in Pressure Points, you know that everyone is in need of quite a lot of comfort, and that's exactly what they get. Well, it's mostly what Sherlock gets.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, meredelicious, for looking over this for me. You're an angel!

I wake up, startled into the awareness that the car has come to a stop and John is opening the door. He’s sliding out from under me, gently as though he doesn’t want to wake me, and I can hear another car idling not far away.

“John?” I croak.

“I’m here,” he says. “Mycroft’s arranged for another car. Do you think you can get out?”

My entire body has stiffened into a knot of agony as I slept, but I manage to keep myself more or less quiet as I manoeuvre myself upright. I can’t quite stop the hiss of pain as I sit, though, but that’s okay, John can’t hear it anyway. He’s out of the car and coming around now, to open the door on my side and help me out. I’d like to say I let him, but the truth is that I don’t have much confidence in my ability to stand up right now.

The gravel on the roadside digs into my bare feet and I am painfully reminded that I am naked under my Belstaff, but I ignore that and look at the other car. It’s one of Mycroft’s, and next to it is Anthea, eyes on her mobile and a bag in her other hand. I can see Mycroft at the edge of the light, standing with his back to everything, and I wish he would come closer. Anthea glances up at me, and even in the dark I can see her face twist in on itself, just for a moment before she takes a deep breath and calms herself down by force. John helps me hobble closer, the pain of the gravel cutting into my feet a welcome distraction from the pain everywhere else. I feel as though I’ve been beaten, the sharper and more immediate pains – my arse, my throat, my right thigh and left buttock where Magnussen brought down his heavy hand on my skin – mere highlights, afterthoughts, brief motifs in the concerto of agony my body is playing.

“I brought clothes,” she says. “Is he dead?”

“Very,” I say, taking the bag from her. There are no other cars about, so I put the bag on the hood of the car and shrug out of the coat. Anthea doesn’t react, just reaches out to help me with the zip while John retrieves my poor abused coat from the ground. It will have to be sterilized, I think, and even then I don’t know if I could bear to wear it again. I can feel Magnussen on my skin still, snail-trails of his touch on my face, my hair, my thighs. I’m desperate for a bath, for a shower, for some way to get his filth off me, but this will have to do for now. “You’d have liked it, Anthie,” I add as she pulls a soft t-shirt over my head. “John stomped on his throat. It looked like it hurt just as much as we always thought it would.”

She stops in the act of kneeling to help me into a pair of pyjama trousers, grabs John, and pulls him into a hug, planting a kiss on his cheek in the process.

“Thank you,” she says while he stares blankly, and goes back to helping me dress. She’s even brought slippers for my feet, and she gently brushes the road dust from me, dislodging a few pebbles, before slipping my feet into them. Then she looks up at me, her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes are piercing, and she looks as though she can see whatever façade of self-possession I have managed to gather about myself. Part of that is the simple fact that, as Mycroft’s second in command, she is very, very good at reading people, but I flatter myself that she wouldn’t be able to read me so well if we hadn’t known each other literally since we were in nappies together. “Do you need a doctor?” she asks.

“I’ve got John,” I say stupidly. “Why would I need another doctor?”

John clears his throat.

“You might not…after what happened at Appledore, I’d understand if you didn’t want me to touch you,” he says, and it sounds as though it hurts.

“Why would I ever not want you to touch me?” I ask, honestly confused. He breathes in sharply, and I go over the words in my head. _Oh_. Rather showed my hand there, didn’t I? I’m too tired and flayed to maintain any kind of pretence for John now, and he’ll just have to live with it. I can’t imagine that he will still want to be my (best? only?) friend once he’s come to his senses anyway, so does it matter that once upon a time I had wondered wistfully what his naked skin would feel like under my hands?

“So, no doctor, then,” Anthea says. “I’ve brought a medical kit but I suppose your parents will have everything you need anyway. Will you be going in the Hole?”

 _Oh_. Oh, yes, that sounds delightful. I can almost see it now, the dark comfort of the bunker under my parents’ unassuming cottage, the bolthole used by generations of agents, Holmes and others. I’d played there, when I was a child, when nobody was using it. We all had, pretending that we were just back from some harrowing ordeal and needed to be pampered a bit. Anthie had demanded that Mycroft and I peel grapes for her, and we’d pulled the mattresses from the large beds together in the common room and piled together to sleep. I want that so much I can _taste_ it. And oh, the big round bathing pool off the common room, just this side of too-hot, ever so faintly sulphurous and rich with minerals.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Anthea says, and puts her hand on my cheek. “You’ll be okay, Sherlock.”

I nod, and John helps me to get into Mycroft’s new car, settling in beside me with a sigh. He pulls me down again, so that I’m lying crosswise on the seat with my head pillowed on his thigh, and he begins to pet my hair, gently dragging his fingers through my curls. It reminds me and doesn’t remind me of Magnussen, the way his hands clenched and tugged at my hair as he held me still to _no no not thinking of that_ and I reach up to catch his wrist.

“Please don’t do that,” I say softly. “It reminds me of…” It’s not entirely untrue, but I don’t want any more of Magnussen on John than there already is. It’s bad enough that he’s had his hands all over me, he doesn’t get to paint his slime all over John, even posthumously.

John makes a soft sound in the back of his throat and takes my hand in both of his.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he says. “Is this okay?”

John’s fingers intertwine with mine, one hand cupping the back of my (larger) hand, the other wrapped around it, through it, like vines growing together. It reminds me of running from the police, _come on, John_ and it’s…it’s fine. I nod and he relaxes, holding onto my hand gently but firmly. I keep forgetting that John and Mycroft will need comfort too, that I’m not the only person Magnussen violated tonight. I will have to be better about that, have to stop putting so much on them. Mycroft gets into the car and starts it without a word and begins driving.

“Mycroft,” I say. “Thank you.”

Mycroft’s laugh is bitter as acid and sounds like it hurts.

“You know,” he says conversationally, “I never thought I’d rue the day you thanked me for anything, brother mine. You certainly don’t need to thank me for _that_.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it without you,” I say simply.

“You wouldn’t have _had_ to go through with it without me, Sherlock.”

“He’d have found a way,” John says. His hand clenches ever so slightly on mine, but the entire rest of his body goes rigid. “People like that don’t have just the one plan, Mycroft, you should know that.”

“I do,” Mycroft says. “I’m curious to know how _you_ do, though, Doctor Watson.”

John shrugs, and silence returns. I allow myself to drift away again. It’s not sleep, precisely (if I sleep, I might dream, and I desperately don’t want to dream right now) but a comfortable in-between state where I don’t need to think. I allow myself to surface when the car slows, and when I lever myself up – careful not to sit properly upright – I find that Mycroft has brought me home.

If I thought I was stiff before, that’s _nothing_ to now. It takes John and Mycroft both to get me to my feet, every part of my body protesting along the way, and I can’t quite stop myself from making soft sounds of pain as we move. We’re a strange six-legged creature as we hobble to the door, John leaving me to Mycroft so he can open it before us.

Mycroft and I are only a step behind him, and we almost crash into him as he freezes just inside the door, going completely soldier-still. Just beyond him, my mother’s hand does not waver as she holds a silenced pistol at his face. The barrel looks huge. To someone else, it might look strange, Mummy’s sleep-wild white hair, her comfortable old-lady body in its comfortable old-lady pyjamas, and the unwavering grip on a clearly well-worn pistol. To me, it’s home and safety, and every good thing from early-morning cocoa to the sound of twin violins.

I make a choked sound and, moving as one, Mycroft and I stumble past John. My mother makes the gun disappear with a magician’s grace and breathes a curse.

“Mummy,” I say as we collapse into her open arms. I know she’s read the night in the set of my eyes, the limp in my walk, the foul stench on my skin, but she opens her arms and engulfs me in her warmth anyway.

“Oh, my poor boys,” she murmurs. Then she raises her head, and I know she’s looking at John, her eyes hard as flint. “Is he dead?”

John makes an uncomfortable sound.

“Very,” he says, echoing my words to Anthea.

“Mummy,” Mycroft says. His voice is muffled, his face buried in Mummy’s neck. “Sherlock desperately wants a bath. Can we go in the Hole tonight?”

“Miss Moriarty’s still in there, though – Sherlock, wait!” but it’s too late. I’ve stepped away from and past her, my legs coltish and uncertain but willing enough, and I almost go down against the kitchen table, but Mycroft’s got me, his arm around my torso and his hand a clamp on my wrist, and he’s half-carrying me forward. Behind me, John is saying something, somewhere between puzzled and angry, but I’m almost incandescent, because Janine is here, and I’d somehow forgotten. I’m suddenly desperate to see the look on her face when I tell her that Magnussen is dead, that nobody will ever touch her that way again. I rather think it will make it all worthwhile.

“Come along, John,” Mycroft says. “You’ll understand in a moment.”

A bit more than a moment, because there’s the trap door to the cellar, and the steps down are a nightmare, and then there’s the cunningly hidden door in the cellar wall, but finally, _finally_ we’re in the Hole.

“Sherl?” comes a sleepy voice, and Janine appears in the door to one of the bedrooms. She takes me in with a look, and says _“Oh, Sherlock_ ” in a terrible, haunted tone, but I’ve let go of Mycroft and I’m half-running, half- falling towards her, and we collide in the centre of the room. The force of it sends us to our knees, but she’s got her hands on the sides of my face and I’m holding on to her shoulders as though she’s a lifeline (isn’t she though? The only other person who can possibly understand me right now?).

“Oh, I should never have let you go,” she says, pressing her forehead against mine. “Oh, Sherlock, look what he’s done to you!”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I say, and I think I may be beginning to cry. “It’s okay, Janine, he’s dead now, he’s dead, John smashed his throat with his foot, he choked on his own bones, his throat smashed in so he couldn’t breathe.” I’m a babbling wreck, and I _am_ crying, but she only wraps her arms around me and pulls me in, and lets me cry on her. My hands are clenched into fists at her back, pressing into the smooth skin there, and she holds me close with a hand at the back of my head and a strong warm arm around my back.

“Truly?” she asks, and Mycroft must have given her some sign that I couldn’t see, because she makes a sound as though someone has punched all the air out of her, and begins to cry, her tears soaking my shirt. After a minute, though, she takes a deep breath and leans back so she can look into my face. “Your turn now,” she says simply. “Do you want it?”

I nod immediately, and she pulls me to my feet. Neither Mycroft nor John offer to help as she half-carries me to the bathing room and closes the door behind us, although I can feel John’s puzzlement and confusion boring into my back.

There’s an element of ritual to this, of comfort, although I’ve never been on the receiving end before. First there’s the crinkle of the blister pack of painkillers Mycroft hands through the door. I take two, though they’re stronger than what I’m used to. It’s useful to be a bit spacey for what comes next. Gently, gently, Janine strips the borrowed clothes off me, and then we step into the bath together. I sit on the ledge that runs around the bathing pool, and Janine kneels in front of me, the water coming up to her chin. The water is glorious, the heat unknotting all my sore muscles even as the water stings on the places where Magnussen tore me.

“Hair first, I think,” she says, and I nod. She usually left her hair for last, but I can’t bear the creeping, crawling feeling of Magnussen’s slime against my scalp. We switch positions, Janine sitting down, me relaxed in front of her. She dips me to wet my hair and then pulls me against her, back-to-font, to rub in the shampoo.

I revel in it, in her skin on mine, as I’d done the first time she’d come to me after an evening of Magnussen’s attentions. She was the one who asked me to help her become clean, to wash Magnussen from her skin, and we’d crowded into 221B’s bath together, and I’d followed the soap with my hands, overlaying his touch with my own, and we’d slept in my bed, entangled. Before that, we’d gone to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other (though we always woke up vined together in the morning), but after that we dispensed with unnecessary distance altogether. We were safe for each other, Janine and I, safe for and safe from each other, because I didn’t want women (had only ever wanted one person, and what a sickening irony that is) that way and Janine had never wanted anyone that way at all.

After a while, she’d spoken to me of something called skin hunger, the human desire for touch. Babies died from it, she said, and old people turned their faces to the wall because of it. I could see it in me, in her. I’d never known the gnawing void for what it was, only that when John moved into 221B and filled my life with casual touch and caring, the roaring ache in my bones had seemed to subside. It had come back while I was away, worse than ever, a constant hunger that seemed to burn in my very bones, and it had become a blaze, a ravenous need, since my return. It was somehow worse, the terrible loneliness, when I was in 221B without John Watson, than when I was anywhere else. It was better, with Janine there. Janine, who curled up against me on the couch, in my bed, who played the piano on the knobs of my spine, who woke me from nightmares and held me close and chaste and beloved. She wasn’t John – she could never be John, but she was there, and John wasn’t, and I desperately needed someone to be there.

If Jim had known that Janine would have this with me, he would probably have had a stroke on the spot. I think that was more than half of the original attraction, in Janine’s case. It was almost certainly the reason she’d offered her help in my quest against Magnussen, become my willing co-conspirator when all I’d originally wanted was a smokescreen.

Janine dips me again, cleaning the shampoo from my hair, and rubs conditioner into it. She makes me stand and washes me, reverently, all over, following the soap with her hands. I can feel Magnussen dissolving. She doesn’t ask me where he touched me. She knows he touched me everywhere, so everywhere is where she goes. She has me close my eyes and washes my face, cleans Magnussen from my lips, has me rinse my mouth with clean hot water that leaves behind a sharp, metallic taste and stings where my lip is split from the rough use Magnussen made of me. She has me lean back with my head on the edge of the pool, and strokes my legs from thigh to ankle, cleans the remains of road dust from between my toes, and plants a tickling, smiling kiss on the tip of my big toe. Sometimes she kisses a part of me. The bruise on my buttock, a hickey on my chest that I never even noticed being made, my ragged and aching knees, and it’s as though her slow careful touches redeem the marks, turn them into battle wounds instead.

I remember the time he’d bitten her, bitten every soft and sensitive place on her body. There had been marks. He’d drawn blood. I had kissed them all, and by the time I was done we were both crying. Janine doesn’t linger over my injuries, just cleans them with a minimum of fuss, the way I have done for her – the way she used to have to do alone, with a mirror and undignified contortions, and I am so grateful for her gentle silence that I cry again, and she pulls me in and holds me close while I fall apart. She cleanses me, soothes me, brings me back into myself. When she’s finished, she helps me out of the pool and dries me with infinite care and a fluffy towel before handing me a tube of ointment – combination antibacterial and analgesic, her favourite brand.

“I’m going to send John in just a minute,” she says wrapping a towel around my waist. I nod at her, and she goes. It’s a gentle sort of trance I’m in now, peaceful and thinking of nothing in particular. I’m clean and light and free, and though I know that in the morning I’ll feel him on my skin again, crawling all over me, and though I know I’ll see him in my dreams, I don’t let it scare me.

The calm begins to fade as I apply the ointment, but I’m still riding the high when John comes in. He looks at me for a moment and smiles, and puts his hand on my arm. His right hand, because his left hand is down by his side, shaking. His tremor, then, I’ve brought it back.

“Feel better?” he asks, and I nod again. “Do you need me to have a look at you? Any pain?”

I shake my head briefly.

“I think it’s just minor tearing,” I say. “Janine gave me some of her ointment, it should…help. I think I’m okay, actually.” Even I can hear the surprise in my voice. “I know you won’t rest easy until you’ve seen for yourself, though.” I don’t particularly want John looking at that part of me right now, but I know it will make him feel better, reassure his doctor’s instincts.

John smiles up at me, stroking my arm from shoulder to elbow, his hand warm and dry against my bath-warmed skin.

“No, I don’t need to see. I…er…had a quick look at Magnussen’s place. You were pretty out of it, and I thought…best to get it over with, then you wouldn’t need to…” He blushes like a brushfire. “It’s a bit not-good, I guess, but…”

“No, no, it’s…it’s good.” And it _is_ good. I don’t have to…I can feel the tension running out of me, and I sag a little. “Thank you. For…for doing that. And I’m sorry for dragging you into it.”

John has both hands on my shoulders now, and his serious face on like he’s about to say something of earth-shattering importance that I absolutely _have_ to hear.

“Sherlock, I…the reason I came in here is, I need to tell you something. What you did tonight…” he stops, breathes, _not good at this sort of thing,_ and I am astonished to see that his eyes are shimmering with tears. “That was…the bravest thing I have ever seen, Sherlock. I can’t…can’t imagine…I could never be that brave.”

I shudder and turn my face away, shaking my head. I am sure that I’m blushing, and I can’t bear to look at John’s face when he’s saying things like that.

“It wasn’t brave, John,” I say. “I was…I was so scared. I just…there was no other choice, do you understand? Not for me.” Not with John and Mycroft at risk. No other feasible option existed – I’d caused them both enough harm for two lifetimes.

John makes a sound like a sob, and his hands go tight on my shoulders.

“And that’s why I say you were brave, Sherlock,” he says. “You were scared, and you didn’t want to do it, and you _made_ yourself do it. For me. I would die for you, Sherlock, I’d die for you in a heartbeat, but what _you_ did for me back there? Dying is easy compared to that. You are the bravest, most wonderful human being I have ever known, and I just…I needed to tell you that.” We stand there in silence for a long time, John’s hands on my shoulders, my face turned away. We’re both struggling to breathe, and I feel as though I’m drowning under a weight of emotion. Eventually, John gentles his hands and unsticks his mouth. “Can I…can I hug you, Sherlock?” he asks, and I nod and basically collapse into his arms, resting my head on top of his, tucking his face against my chest.

I’m staring at the door to the bathing room with John’s breath coming in hot damp puffs against the skin over my heart, and it’s ridiculous but I may actually be _happy_ in this moment. John thinks I am brave. John doesn’t think I am…polluted, or less than I was. He may change his mind later, but for now? For now everything is as close to perfect as anything can be.

I’m not sure how long we stand there, wrapped in each other’s arms, before Janine comes strolling in. She smiles like a sunrise when she sees us, and I smile at her over John’s head. It’s symbiosis, a feedback loop of sorts – my happiness makes Janine happy, which makes me happier, and so on and so forth, until we’re grinning at each other like idiots.

“Brought you something to wear, Sherl,” Janine says, holding up a bundle of soft gray cotton. John practically jumps away from me, looking caught out for some reason. He’s glancing between me and Janine, looking like he’s trying to figure something out. “Your mum’s making hot choccie and your dad’s doing something practically obscene to the Christmas turkey. Seems we’re having a bit of a pyjama party tonight, if you’re up to it.”

“That seems like an excellent plan,” I say. “Where’s Mycroft?”

Janine looks away from me for the first time, her eyes troubled.

“He’s been in the shower for a while,” she says. “Did Magnussen…do something to him too?”

“I…he…” I shrug, and she understands, and I rest a hand on her shoulder as I move past her. She presses the clothing – yoga pants like hers, no doubt standard from the bunkers stores, soft and comfortable and easy to pull on – into my hand as I pass. The showers are on the opposite side of the common room, door firmly shut. I press my ear against the door, ignoring the way my parents’ eyes fix on me, and I can hear the long, stifled wail just at the edge of audible. I glance at Mummy, and open the door.

It’s about what I expected, honestly. He has every shower running at full blast, six of them, it sounds like a waterfall. In the middle of the room, under the hottest, fiercest spray, my brother is on his knees, face pressed into his hands, his mouth open in a low keen. He looks like an illustration from Dante, the very picture of a soul in torment, and he sounds like a wounded animal, uncomprehending and in pain.

I shut the door behind me, and the most observant man in the world doesn’t notice. Suddenly I am _enraged_. If Charles Augustus Magnussen appeared in front of me right now, I would tear him limb from limb. I would rip out his throat with my _teeth_ , I would eat his _heart_ and feed his liver to a dog. How dare he? How dare he do this to Mycroft, to me, to _us_?

I go to my knees in front of Mycroft with an internal snarl, and take his hands away from his face. He’s been clawing at himself, his blunt nails leaving red marks on his skin. He tries to flinch away from me, but I wrap one hand around his and reach out with the other, tipping up his chin so he is forced to look at me.

“No,” I say. The water is punishingly hot and batters against my back, slicking my hair into my face, and I almost have to shout to be heard over the dull roar. “This was not your fault, Mycroft, and I will not have you blaming yourself for it. Are we clear?”

“Sherlock, you don’t…” He closes his eyes and his mouth twists in pain. “You don’t understand.”

“I do, Mycroft,” I say. “I do understand.” I shuffle closer on my knees and pull him up into an embrace. It’s awkward, but I keep hold of him until he relents and puts his arms around me. It doesn’t take long before he starts actually crying, his hands in useless fists at the small of my back, leaking hot tears into my neck. I put a hand on the back of his head and hold him close, hold him while he falls apart. When his sobs slow and he pulls away to look at me I bracket his face in my hands and smile at him. I’m half on the edge of tears again, and my mouth trembles, but I smile at him, and he puts both his hands over mine and stares into my eyes as though I’m the only tether he has to any kind of reality.

“You’re my brother,” I say, “and I love you. Whatever else happens, that will always be true, Mycroft. I will _never_ not love you, do you understand?” I can see that he does. For all that we snipe and snark and snap at each other, for all the way our rough edges abrade and hurt each other, the most basic truth of my life has always been that Mycroft and I love each other. It’s deeper than blood, it’s carved into our very bones, and I am not willing to let a crawling snake like Magnussen taint it. I kiss his forehead and it’s like a benediction. For him, for me. It tastes like forgiveness.

Mycroft manages a tiny smile for me in return, and nods. He’s not all the way back yet, not by a long shot but then, neither am I. We’re going to get there, though, we’re going to be okay eventually, and the relief bubbles in my chest, tipping my mood toward giddy. I can feel my grin turn impish, and soon we’re grinning at each other, and then we’re laughing. It’s almost painful, a deep and shaking belly-laugh that’s almost on the edge of tears, but it feels somehow right. Mycroft and I haven’t laughed together in far, far too long.

 Getting up is…an experience.

“Christ, Mycroft, you couldn’t have your little breakdown somewhere with a _bed_?” I grumble as my legs wobble under me and my feet try to slide.

“Next time, brother mine,” Mycroft says. We’re holding on to each other, and not just because of the treacherous floor, but we’re still laughing softly as we shut down the showers one by one.

We dry off and get dressed – apparently Mycroft has also raided the bunker stores, because we’re clad in matching grays now – and emerge into the common room to find John and Janine staring at each other in awkward silence across the room. Mummy appears a moment later from the storeroom, carrying a pile of bedding.

“Ah, Sherlock. Come and help me set up the bed, won’t you?” she says. John jerks into motion as though to offer to do it instead, but I’m already moving, heartlessly abandoning Mycroft to the awkward (resentful?) atmosphere of the common room as I follow Mummy into one of the bedrooms.

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” she says as we spread the sheet on the bed. “You seem to be physically unharmed, but…”

“I’m…better than I thought I’d be,” I say. “I know it’s not over-“

“God, no, you’ll probably have nightmares for months. I did, and I was prepared for it,” she says. “Sometimes I still have them.”

I look up at her and raise one eyebrow. It’s easy to be calm here, with her practicality, her matter-of-factness about the whole situation. Of course for her it’s part of the cost of doing business, and it’s easier to think of it that way. I may never have actually entered the family business – unusual face, strange eyes, awkward mannerisms and the attention span of a three-year-old; I’d be a frankly _awful_ spy, but there are some things you absorb via osmosis in families like ours. A certain practicality regarding death and harm to life and limb, a _carpe diem_ attitude, and of course, a whole complex of trust issues.

“Thanks for the optimism, Mummy,” I say.

“Optimism gets people killed, Sherlock. I work in practicalities. You’re not emotionally okay, but you can get there. You probably don’t want to talk to Father about this but you know he’s willing to listen, don’t you?”

I pause with a pillow in my hands, think it over.

“Of course. But on the whole…not Father, I don’t think.”

“Mmm, no, I thought not. You’ll need a therapist, then. I’ll get Father to send you a list of some of the better ones out of the current generation. Pick one.”

I nod. Then I sit down on the edge of the bed.

“I have a therapist already, but if Father’s willing to recommend someone I’ll definitely consider it. I thought it was going to happen in Serbia, you know,” I tell her, looking at my knees. “I remember thinking that I should have listened to Father, you know, about the whole…virginity thing. I think it would have been easier if it _had_ happened in Serbia. It wouldn’t have felt so…personal.”

She sighs, and sits down beside me, covering the hand on my knee with her own.

“Oh, my darling. It would always have been awful. And it’s _always_ personal. Even when it’s not. Maybe especially when it’s not. And maybe if you’d gone to see a professional like your father suggested it wouldn’t have been _as_ bad – you’d have known what to expect, at least, but honestly? I’m not sure it would have helped all that much.”

“Maybe a little, though,” I say. She squeezes my hand and lets go.

“Well, maybe a little. As I said, you’d probably have known better what to expect, and that might have helped. But that’s water under the bridge now, and you can’t go back and change it.” She gives a little sigh and changes the subject. “I see your John doesn’t like Janine. Jealous, do you think?”

I bark a harsh laugh and shake my head.

“Honestly, Mummy, as if I’ve ever been able to understand John Watson. Best guess? He didn’t know about the Moriarty connection.”

“Oh, Sherlock, you didn’t tell him?” she asks.

I glance at her from the corner of my eye, attempting to convey the message that I have just been murdered by irony without saying a word. Her lips twitch.

“Sometimes I think you’d have been better off with a more normal upbringing,” she says thoughtfully.

“God, no,” I reply. “Can you even imagine? It would have been horrendous. Anyway, I think I’ve had about as much heart-to-heart as I can stand tonight. You?” She grins up at me, her eyes (my eyes) twinkling up at me with a depth of affection I can’t imagine, and lets me pull her to her feet. Once there, she pulls me into a tight hug.

“Don’t forget to get that list from Father in the morning,” she says, and leaves me alone.

For about half a minute, before John comes in. He’s looking spectacularly awkward as he closes the door behind him.

“Well,” he says. “I think you’re all set here, right?”

I stare at him, puzzled.

“Ye-es…” I drawl. “More or less. I mean…bed. Hot chocolate. Things like that. I think we’re good?”

John nods decisively.

“Right, then. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

I freeze. My blood has turned to ice. John is leaving. John wants to leave. John is going away. This is…this is unacceptable. It’s dangerous out there. _Mary_ is out there. Mary shoots people, what if she shoots John? She shot me, and we were friends, why wouldn’t she shoot John? John can’t go out there. Not tonight. Tonight is dangerous, too dangerous for John to be wandering alone where I can’t see him, where I can’t protect him.

“No,” I say. My voice comes out flat, robotic, but I’m happy I can say anything at all through the clenching panic that’s seized my lungs.  “You, you…” I trail off. There must be some magic combination of words that will make John stay, and I’m sure that if I could just _think_ , I could say them, and my head will stop spinning and I’d be able to breathe and…oh.

I’m sitting on the floor with my head between my knees, and John’s hand is a warm weight on my neck as he kneels next to me saying _breathe, Sherlock, just breathe. Breathe for me_ and I am helpless to refuse – as always – so I do, sucking deep breaths through my mouth, breathing out through my nose, as slowly and evenly as I can. Eventually I don’t have to force it, and I look up at John. He’s staring at me, concerned, and I reach out and twine my fingers in his shirt.

“Please,” I manage, my voice still shaky and not quite itself. “Please stay. Just…just for tonight, okay? Tomorrow you can, you can go. Tomorrow. But-“

“I’ll stay,” John says firmly, squeezing the back of my neck. I manage not to flinch, because this is _John,_ not Magnussen, not some nameless thug in a third-world hellhole who’d held me underwater again and again and _nope, nope, delete delete, not thinking about that stop it_. “If you need me, I’ll stay, of course.”

I nod, and manage to unclench my hand and let him go.

“You okay now?” he asks. He’s still looking concerned, so I try to pull myself together.

“Yeah, yeah, just…panic attacks, you know. I have them sometimes, now. I’m used to it, it’s okay, you don’t have to worry.”

“Sherlock,” he says gently, his face lined and sad and _old_ again. “If you’re having panic attacks, you’re not okay, you do realise that?”

I shrug. What’s there to say? I have, in the words of one of John’s movie characters, _seen some shit_. Action, reaction. The therapist I’ve been seeing said they’d get better, but I’ve more or less accepted that this is how it’s going to be from now on. Maybe I’ll have better luck with someone Father’s trained, although I find it hard to believe that Mycroft would stick me with an inferior therapist.

“How long have you had them?”

I shrug again, wrap my arms around my legs. I’m hugging my legs now, tucking them under my chin. I’m not trembling, so that’s something. I’ve done enough of that tonight, I think.

“Since…mmm, I think the first one was in Paris? Yeah, that was the first one. Turns out rooftops, bad idea. No long-range sniping for me, have to get up close and personal.” I’ll tell him one, that’ll be enough to satisfy him, I think. My list of potential triggers is about as long as the Collected Works of William Shakespeare, though, and includes such wonderful little gems as being too cold, being very hungry, certain kinds of knives, unexpected water, dripping water, rotting water, being touched unexpectedly, being touched from behind, pipes, fireplace pokers, whips, the sound of chains, screaming, the texture of porridge, snow, men speaking Russian, men with tattoos, a certain brand of cigarette that’s thankfully hard to find in England, Claire de la Lune perfume, and oh god I’ve been talking aloud _shit shit shit shut up shut up look at John he’s horrified shut up shut UP!_ I have both hands over my mouth now, staring at John, who’s staring at me.

After a long time, John lets out the breath he’s been holding.

“Jesus, Sherlock. What the hell happened to you out there?” he asks.

“You really don’t want to know,” I tell him. “Come on, help me up, I need something to drink.”

John firms his mouth, tries to get the horrified look off his face (not terribly successfully, I’m afraid), and pulls me to my feet. Once there, I start for the door but he pulls me back to stare at my face.

“How can you have been having panic attacks since you came back without me knowing?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t know, John,” I ask, my voice suddenly flat in my own ears. “How can I have?”

That does the trick, getting him to step away from me with a frown. I stagger slightly as he releases me, but I catch him by the shoulder before he can take more than half a step.

“John,” I say, “It’s okay. You weren’t meant to know. And it’s not as bad as all that, on a good day I hardly even notice” _filthy lie, Sherlock, you’re always waiting for the next one, aren’t you? “_ Now please, come into the common room with me and have some hot chocolate, and we’ll all sleep here tonight, and then tomorrow…well, tomorrow is tomorrow, isn’t it? Isn’t there a song about the sun or something?”

“You deleted the solar system but kept _Annie_?” John asks.

I shrug. Mycroft had taken me to a production once, when I was thirteen and he was twenty, and the song had stubbornly resisted deletion since then. I sweep past him and into the common room, almost crashing into Janine. She wraps my hand around a mug of hot chocolate almost the size of my head, and smiles.

“Okay?” she asks.

I give her a smile and a nod, and take a sip of the hot chocolate. Janine has clearly been at it, because it’s less ‘hot chocolate’ and more ‘someone added milk and cocoa to my whiskey’. It burns going down, and she twinkles at me as we wander over to the conversation pit, where Mycroft has settled himself with a plate of Father’s sandwiches and his own hot chocolate. John seems a bit awkward as I push him down onto the pillowed couch-thing and flop over with my head in his lap, but he doesn’t actually push me away so I count it as a victory, and Janine lifts my feet into her lap and begins to rub them absently as we sip our hot chocolate.

“You know,” she says after a while, “I’ve never known him to go after someone primarily for sex before. I mean, he was happy enough to take it once he’d gotten everything else they had, but this? I’d never have let you go there if I’d known, Sherl,” she says. She sounds guilty, and I scowl at her.

“It’s not your fault, Janine,” I say. “If it’s anyone’s, it’s mine. He as good as told me what he wanted in the hospital, but it got…buried, I guess. Under the morphine and all that.”

Mycroft is staring at me now, his eyebrows drawn up.

“He _what_?”

I squirm a little, uncomfortable, and John puts his hand in my hair again. It’s like it’s a habit he can’t break, which is strange because before tonight I can’t remember him doing it at all. It’s tremendously soothing, now that I don’t have Magnussen all over me, and it helps a lot as I explain about his strange hospital visit, the way he’d kissed my hand, his face over mine. There’s a long, long silence after that, as we all think of what could have been avoided if I hadn’t been off my tits on morphine (not that I’m sorry about that, I’d just been fucking _shot_ , I think I was allowed some morphine). Eventually, I half sit up to drain my hot booze, and sprawl back onto John’s lap with a sigh.

“So I should have seen it coming, really. What I don’t understand is _why_.” I frown. “I mean, he could have asked for…you know, secrets. Money. _Things_. Why that? He had to have known that Mycroft wouldn’t let him get away with that.”

“He liked having things,” Janine says quietly. “Things nobody else had. That was part of the appeal, I think, having things nobody else could have, things he wasn’t supposed to have. Faberge eggs, a lost Da Vinci.”

“Moriarty’s baby sister,” Mycroft offers wryly. “The ultimate collector.”

“I’m so glad I killed him,” John says suddenly. “Bastard.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Janine says, apparently to her hot chocolate. “He was a _monster_.”

“Yeah, I got that impression. But look, I have…a lot of questions. Such as, apparently there’s a secret bunker under your parents’ cottage, Sherlock, and why exactly _is_ Moriarty’s baby sister in said bunker?”

I shrug.

“The Holmes family has been in the intelligence industry since before there _was_ such a thing. It’s important to have a place where we know we’re safe. This place hasn’t been found in four hundred years – it was here before the house was, actually – it’s the safest place I know of. And as for Janine-“

“I’m not his _baby_ sister,” she interrupts me, scowling. “We were twins. Not that that ever did me a damn bit of good, not when he sold me to Magnussen like a fucking _cow_.”

John startles.

“Sold? As in…?”

“Well, it was more a leverage situation,” Janine says, “Magnussen wanted me where he could keep an eye on me, I was his security in case Jim turned on him. But then of course Jim got himself killed and Magnussen had run out of other uses for me. That’s when I became desperate enough to go along with Sherl’s mad plan. Of course, I didn’t think that plan A would get Sherlock shot. Maybe we should have taken that as a sign or something, I don’t know.” She sighs deeply, and I press my feet into her belly firmly.

“It was worth it,” I say, and I’m surprised to find myself slurring a bit.” He’s dead, you’re safe, Mary’s safe, everyone’s safe.” I’m suddenly enormously sleepy, and I stifle a massive yawn. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“Hmm, I’m not surprised,” John says, sounding equally sleepy. “It’s been a hell of a night, and I don’t think the nap in the car was enough. Plus, it’s three in the morning. Human beings are not supposed to look what three AM looks like.”

Janine rolls her head on the back of the couch, smiling into space.

“You know, I think I may be actually _happy_. Isn’t that strange? I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself now. The cottage is a dead loss, I don’t have any money, heh, I don’t even have any _clothes_ , but I’m…generally delighted with the entire situation.”

“Well, you’re a free woman now,” Mycroft says, toasting her with his hot chocolate. “That’s something to be happy about, isn’t it? And I might have something for you to do in my department. You have excellent acting skills and a certain…moral flexibility that can be hard to come by in today’s world.”

Janine grins and lifts her empty mug in a toast.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

I gradually let the conversation fade from my awareness, distracted by John’s fingers in my hair and the overwhelming lassitude that seems to be overtaking me. Eventually I must fall asleep, because I come back to myself as John and Janine haul me to my feet.

“Mmph” I protest sleepily, but go along anyway as they haul me into the bed room and let me flop onto the bed. Someone (Mycroft) has opened the duvet, and I curl up with a happy sigh, catching hold of John’s wrist and pulling him down with me. Janine tumbles in after him, slotting along my back as though she was made for it and I can hear Mycroft settling in behind her with a contented sigh. In front of me though, John is stiff as a board.

“What are we doing, Sherlock? “he asks.

“Cuddle pile, obviously,” I slur. “Were you raised by _wolves_ , John?” He remains stiff and unresponsive, not relaxing at all. I sigh and resent the need to wake up enough to explain this to a doctor, who really should know this sort of thing already. “Primates have been shown to recover from trauma more quickly when they receive grooming and dose contact from their community.”

“Translation,” Janine murmurs from where she has tucked her face into the back of my neck,” Sherlock has had a bad day, and demands cuddles.”

John huffs a laugh and relaxes fractionally, allowing me to wrap my arm around him. Mycroft reaches over Janine to grip my shoulder.

“Sleep well, brother mine,” he says, the weight of sleep already in his voice. I hum agreeably and fall asleep almost immediately.

In the morning, I remember waking one or twice from nightmares (Moriarty, Magnussen, Mary, Serbia - I have no shortage of nightmare fodder these days) but I was surrounded by warmth and the familiar smells of home and family, and sunk easily back into sleep. When I wake up the last time, though, there’s an empty spot along my front where John was, and I can hear Mycroft moving about in the common room.

I leave Janine sleeping – although the way she frowns and grumbles to herself when I slide out from under her arm says that she is not long for sleep either – and go to investigate. I ache again, the painkillers having worn off, and my first steps are more of a slantwise stagger as the overstrained long muscles at the back of my thighs go into spasm. I manage not to curse, but barely, and get myself out of the room without waking Janine. Mycroft is standing in the kitchen area, scrambling eggs and frying bacon and glaring balefully at a tablet he’s propped up against the kettle.

“Morning,” I mutter, sagging down onto the couch – sitting on one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs sounds like a truly awful idea right now. “Where’s John?”

“Upstairs,” Mycroft says, gesturing at the tablet. I lean over and get what’s clearly a feed from the kitchen, where John is sitting quietly with Mummy and Father and Mary, having a breakfast of leftover Christmas lunch. “Mummy thought it best that we not all disappear, and besides, there’s the car to explain as well. She was very curious about our location before she went to sleep last night, but Mummy is confident she didn’t see or hear us come in.” He dishes up three servings of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, sliding the last slice onto the plate just as Janine emerges, blinking, from the bedroom.

“Oh, ta, Mike,” she says, immediately taking two and joining me on the couch. “I don’t suppose there’s any coffee?”

“Sadly, no,” Mycroft says, glaring at the kettle as though it has personally offended him. “It seems it’s run out.” He joins us in the conversation pit, folding his legs to sit cross-legged on the couch opposite, and it’s honestly been decades since I’ve seen this Mycroft – the soft, sleep-rumpled Mycroft who makes the best scrambled eggs in the world, and hasn’t yet mustered up enough energy to sneer at the world. He’s put the tablet down on the table in between the couches, and I watch John look uncomfortable surrounded by his wife and my parents. Mary is giving him sidelong glances but not asking too many questions, and I wonder what he’s going to tell her about last night. I wonder if it matters.

It’s a companionable enough breakfast, and once John and Mary have left in Mary’s car we troop upstairs. Mycroft’s given me some more painkillers and I’m pleasantly float as Mummy provides us all with industrial-strength coffee and Father presses a list into my hand – therapists, ones he trained personally, ones he trusts. I promise to give them a chance, and Father smiles at me and helps me out to the car, putting me in the back seat where sleeping will be easier.

“You’re going to be okay, Sherlock,” he says, seeming to fade away as my eyes slip closed again, the painkillers taking me back to dreamland. “You’re going to be just fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT THE END!
> 
> I'm already several thousand words into another story in this 'verse, in which (hopefully) there is a happy Johnlocky ending. Or possibly a Johnlocknine ending, I'm not sure.
> 
> I decided to split it from this one because it gets all angsty and I thought it best to separate the comfort from the angst.


End file.
